Some of the The Work I made in Steven Paul Day's Class at Pilchuck Glass School '94

 I wanted to see if ceramic shell kiln casting was anything for me.

I desides to try it on difficul shapes and found out that if you have a sharp curve like the below pieces have the ceramic shell is stronger than the glass and breaks the glass as it cools down in the kiln, same as clay does.

I think I will stay with my clay molds :)

They are much much cheaper

I can often reuse them

Enviromentaly wholesome compare to .....

Don't need to make a wax piece first

Give the work the charater that I like

AND many other + + + + + + + + +

Four Blue Links

Ceramic shell kiln glass casting

1/2' x 1/4' x 3"

 

Toy Links

Plastic toy and glass

Ceramic shell kiln casting

This picture shows how some part of the Ceramic shell kiln casting is done.

You create something in a material that can burn, for example in wax. Then paint on the Ceramic Shell. Let each layer dry. You do this until the covering is thick enough to hold the glass you are going to put in ( a little bit more than a egg shell in most cases). Then you burn out the wax either with a torch or in a kiln. Let the cup turn down so the wax can run out. Have a pan or something below to hold the wax that comes out. The mold will turn black from the material that you are burning out and then that material is gone the mold will turn white again .It will now be water resistance. To get this material off your piece after it has been fired with glass you use a sharp knife or a razor blade to pluck it off. Sometimes the glass sticks to the Ceramic Shell and the only way to get it off, that I know, is to sandblast the piece or grind it off.

 

Some of the things that didn't work but good to learn so you don't do this mistake.

 

I wanted to attempt to make a piece that was out of copper and glass fused together.

See picture below.

BUT I didn't know then that the copper gets really brittle when it is heated up over 1300 F. Coppers anniealing point is around 1000 if I remember right so from that point on it starts to break down. Specially if you cook it for several hours like I did to make sure the glass had run into the molds and filled them.

Another thing was that not all glass types take copper as well and when the glass cools the glass might break around the areas that the copper is for it contracts more than the copper does. I was useing.

 

So this is what came out.

The copper was too weak to hold up the glass and the glass was fracturing around the copper that I had stuck into it.

There are number of ways around a problem like this .

What I have found to be the best solution is to code a copper tube with kilnwash or plaster and put it into the glass. Then you put the copper wire into the tubes in the cast glass when you have finished coldworking your glass and time to see it in one piece.

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